


The Opposite of Ambition

by Drag0nst0rm



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Now with more comfort!, Though frankly more hurt than comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-08-13 09:00:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20171635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: They say he'll be High King now.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own the Silmarillion.
> 
> swirls-of-randomness wanted role reversal, Elrond and Gil-Galad, and hurt/comfort.
> 
> I definitely got the "hurt" part of that equation covered.

“No,” Elrond says, and it has the combined force and weight of all the _no’s_ he’s been biting back since they stole - rescued him.

No, he does not actually want to be rescued, not when that means being snatched away from that disastrous skirmish before he could even see who was still alive, particularly not when Elros was still there. No, he does not want to sit and listen while his rescuers mutter dark things about the sons of Feanor, and how one of them thinks he might have done the singer in before they had to flee - 

No, he does not want to meet with all these relatives he’s told he has, but that he’s never seen. No, he doesn’t want another helping of supper.

He doesn’t really want to eat at all.

He’s bitten back all of those refusals and instead nodded and forced smiles and clung tightly to the connection he could still feel to Elros. He had been polite. He had been good.

But this is one step too far.

“Gil-Galad is the king,” he said in a slightly calmer tone. He can’t remember who Gil-Galad’s father is, it wasn’t something that had been much discussed in the Feanorian camp, but it doesn’t matter. If he’s ahead in the succession somehow, he’ll yield the crown. Surely that’s what everyone wants in any case.

Everyone looks at each other - Celeborn, who is here to stand for the Sindarin elves, Finarfin, who is also king, and Círdan, who has looked pale and grey every time Elrond has seen him.

The look they share is equal parts awkward and pained.

King Finarfin leans forward in his chair. “Gil-Galad was in the party that ran into my - the Feanorians. He shouldn’t have been there, he never should have been, but he had gotten restless and - ” He stops and swallows before he says, “He was not one of the ones who escaped.”

They didn’t run into the Feanorians, Elrond wants to say, they ran into the orcs, which unfortunately happened to be attacking the Feanorian camp at the time, and then - 

Well, in the heat of battle, someone had struck the first blow, and then things had turned ugly, fast. Maglor had shouted at him and Elros to run, and they had, only they had gotten separated, and then when Maedhros had returned from patrol with the elves who had ridden out with them, Gil-Galad’s forces had panicked and ran -

In all the confusion, one of Gil-Galad’s men had managed to snatch Elrond up. Apparently, they should have been paying more attention to snatching up their king instead.

It’s an unkind thought, and Elrond bites it back like all the others, and instead looks at his hands. “Is he dead?”

He’s related to Gil-Galad somehow, he knows, even if he’s not sure quite how. Maglor had recited his whole family tree for him once. When appropriate, Maedhros had interjected with causes of death.

Maedhros had interjected a lot.

Círdan’s grip on the window ledge he’s standing by tightens. Finarfin’s eyes flick to him before he answers gently. “We don’t know,” he says. “No one saw him fall.”

“But the Feanorians have no reason to keep him alive,” Celeborn says, and the look on his face reminds Elrond that Celeborn had been at Doriath.

Elrond frowns. “They don’t have any reason to kill him either,” he points out. 

The adults share looks again.

Elrond has grown to hate those looks even in the short time he’s been here.

“Even if he is alive, he is not here,” Celeborn says more gently, “and all efforts at finding him have failed. Someone must stand in his place.”

Elrond’s eyes flick to Finarfin.

Finarfin grimaces. “There have been … tensions,” he says. “It would be better if there was someone to speak for the elves who have been longer in Beleriand.”

“The Sindar will accept you as well,” Celeborn says, and it sounds like a pledge.

Elrond’s stomach rolls sickly. “I’m too young,” he points out.

“You’ve the blood of Men as well as elves,” Celeborn counters. “Like Dior did. You’ve grown well beyond what an elf would have for your years.”

This is true. It does not change the fact that Elrond is still too young.

“We’ll help you, of course,” Finarfin adds. “We all will.” For just a moment, he looks impossibly weary. “Just - the people need this. For the sake of morale if nothing else.”

And Elrond - 

When Sirion burned, Elrond hadn’t cried. Not once.

He’d just - retreated into himself for a little while. Let his whole being fall blank and passive and let whatever was going to happen come.

Elros had drawn him out of it with whispered, terrified threats and furious tears. Elros’s tears, and Maglor’s songs, steady and comforting, and a warm thread to hold onto as he wound his way back.

And now that blankness hovers around him again and has since large hands had grasped him in the middle and lifted up into the saddle and hadn’t listened to him screaming Elros’s name.

Everything hurts, and everything’s too much, and no one’s listening, so It’s surprisingly easy to step back into that blankness now; to hover at its edges, not quite surrendering, just enough for every expression on his face to utterly shut down.

Finarfin’s face crumples a little, and he reaches out to touch Elrond’s shoulder, but he stops when Elrond flinches away.

Finarfin’s face crumples still further. “I’m sorry,” he says softly, and then he goes away, and Celeborn does too, but only after he bows.

Everyone goes away eventually, Elrond knows. You just have to wait long enough.

Círdan, he realizes a moment later, has not yet gone away. Círdan is still there, and since he has not spoken once in this whole disaster of a conversation, Elrond finds he does not much mind.

“I met Feanor once,” Círdan says, and his words are so unexpected that Elrond jumps. “And his sons. Their arrival felt like a miracle then. I never imagined - “ He stops himself and shakes his head. “I never knew them well,” he admits. “You probably know them as well as anyone now.”

Círdan, Elrond remembers suddenly, had raised Gil-Galad, at least in part. 

The blankness recedes a little, and he stands, though hesitantly, and moves over to the window. 

He can see the sea outside it. 

Sometimes he thinks he hates the sea.

“They won’t hurt him,” he says, and he’s a little surprised by his own voice. “If he survived the fight, they won’t have hurt him.” He has no idea what they will do with him, but they have no reason to hurt him, and it’s evident Círdan needs the reassurance. Besides, the long, stretched-thin cord between him and Elros feels only hurt and lonely, not full of Elros’s righteous indignation, so he feels fully confident of that.

His bond with Elros is not full of grief either, and Elrond clings to that in the dark hours of the night when all he can think about is that warrior’s words of, _“I think I got the singer in the gut before his half-thrall brother showed up - “_

Maglor must still be alive. He must be.

The pain in Círdan’s face eases a little, but his focus is abruptly fully on Elrond. “Don’t worry about me,” he says as he takes in Elrond’s concern. “How are you holding up?”

Elrond ignores this question. “They’d probably be willing to trade if you can find them,” he says. “They don’t have any reason to want to keep Gil-Galad, really. They’d probably be willing to switch.”

Cīrdan’s gaze grows even sharper. “We’re not sending you back,” he says firmly. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

“I’m not worried,” Elrond says, and Cīrdan’s face is worn down by a new kind of pain.

“It’s not just Elros you miss, is it?”

Elrond turns away and looks back at the sea.

But there’d been no condemnation in Cīdan’s voice when he’d said it, so when he puts a comforting arms around Elrond’s shoulders and draws him closer, Elrond doesn’t flinch away.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done at the request of my-silmarillion-soul, who caught the last slot in my prompt event.
> 
> Note: Not all views of characters expressed herein are my views.

Gil-Galad is not at all sure why he’s not dead yet.

It’s not a new thought. It’s one that’s been plaguing him since they handed him a crown and told him he was king. 

The other kings in exile had all died - Fingon, who had looked so impossibly strong when Gil-Galad was small, Fingolfin, who had been able to challenge Morgoth himself, even Feanor, who, whatever else everyone said about him, had at least not lacked for might.

The other kings too: Finrod, whose death he had imagined in a thousand nightmares, Turgon, whose daughter really should have been the one to take the crown, Thingol, who had attracted Melian herself . . .

He knows all their deeds, all their power, all their strength.

And he knows how they all died.

Gil-Galad has never once seen the light of the Trees. He does not have any legendary deeds to his name. He does not feel strong.

He doesn’t know why he’s not dead yet.

He can’t ask anyone that, though, of course, because even he knows that’s not the kind of thing kings say.

He asked Círdan once anyway because he can ask Círdan anything, and he still remembers the terrible grief that had swept over Círdan’s face before the older elf had pulled him close and said, “Because I am not dead yet, and they will never reach you so long as I can yet stand in their way.”

He had known intellectually, even then, that no one could make that promise. Not really.

He knows it in his heart now, because he is tied to a post in a Feanorian tent, the blood of his kin still drying on his rope-burned hands, and Círdan isn’t here.

The Feanorian lord had been badly injured, he’d seen, before he was hauled away. If he dies -

Gil-Galad is going to die. He forces himself to take away that comforting if and confront himself with it. He is going to die, and he might as well get used to it.

The tent flap opens, and he braces himself for fury, for swords, for anything. 

He does not brace himself for a boy just entering adolescence that is carrying food.

The boy looks weary past bearing, but he does his best to smile anyway. “Hello,” he says. “I’m Elros. Did you know your men stole my brother?”

Gil-Galad learns three things in the many visits that follow:

First, that Prince Maglor is apparently recovering and expected to live after all.

(“He has to live,” Elros says the first time, fiercely. “He _has_ to,” and Gil-Galad is not at all convinced, but with each subsequent visit Elros gets a bit lighter, and Gil-Galad slowly comes to believe with considerable relief of his own.)

Second, that there is considerable debate in the camp what to do about their new prisoner.

(“No one really wanted you,” Elros explains before smacking his forehead and saying with surprising intensity, “Of course someone wants you, that’s not what I meant at all,” and he waits before Gil-Galad nods a bemused acceptance of this before continuing on. “It’s just the people that want you are all over in your camp, and we didn’t mean to take you from them, it just sort of happened, and now we can’t decide how to get you back without getting shot at and whether or not we should ask for something when we do.”)

That we is the third thing he learns: that Elros has some very odd and somewhat concerning ideas about who constitutes that we and exactly who was stolen from whom.

(“Of course we were stolen,” Elros says, frowning, “but that doesn’t mean it was alright for _you_ to try to steal us, anymore than it was alright for them to try to steal those stupid gems from Sirion just because the gems were stolen from them first. Stealing is stealing.”

“That’s not how the law works,” Gil-Galad tells him. “And my men weren’t trying to steal your brother from you, they were trying to save him.”

“Stealing is stealing,” Elros says stubbornly, and he sits there and glares until Gil-Galad allows the subject to drop.)

He doesn’t try to convince Elros to let him go so that they can run away together because a) he’s almost entirely certain they’d be caught before they left camp, b) it would take a miracle for the two of them to survive the trip to the Isle of Balar alone, and c) he’s nearly positive Elros would refuse point blank.

That does not quite stop him from wishing he’d tried it when a man with faint scars still covering his face and who is missing one hand entirely enters the tent.

“Prince Maedhros,” he says, and he’s proud that his voice does not shake and that he sounds like the king he spends most of his time thinking he is only pretending to be.

“Cousin,” the prince returns, irony not quite covering the pain and bone deep exhaustion all too evident in his voice. “You’ll be pleased to know that Maglor is well on his way to a full recovery.”

Gil-Galad is pleased, both for the obvious reason and for Elros’s sake, so he’s able to say so quite sincerely.

Maedhros looks at him, a little surprised, and in the silence that follows, Gil-Galad can’t quite refrain from blurting out, “So now what?”

Maedhros looks at him for a long moment and says, in a voice now entirely void of all emotion, “So now we can spare the men to escort you and Elros back to your home.”

Gil-Galad’s second thought, after disbelieving relief, is, “Have you told Elros that yet?”

Maedhros leaves without answering, but that doesn’t matter.

Gil-Galad already knows that the answer is no.

It was a good plan, Gil-Galad thinks in all fairness. A generous plan, even, since the Feanorians weren’t supposed to get anything out of it. It was just a slow progression of the hostages - Gil-Galad, who still can’t quite believe this is happening, and Elros, who is refusing to speak to either Gil-Galad or Maedhros - between the two sides.

Except halfway across the field, someone suddenly breaks off from Gil-Galad’s side and takes off running towards them. Gil-Galad looks sharply to the archers, fearful that hostilities may be about to break out, but it is just one small form that he abruptly realizes must be Elrond.

Elrond, who grabs his brother’s hand and takes off running with them, the movement so smooth that its like the two of them have been planning this.

They take off running towards the Feanorian side.

He should stop them, he thinks, but he can’t, not without shattering the fragile balance already teetering on the edge of violence.

Instead, he walks forward.

Círdan is there the moment he’s in range, and though they’re both careful to preserve the dignity necessary for such a public moment, surely there can be no harm in an embrace.

Círdan holds on just a little too tightly, and Gil-Galad presses that memory into his mind, to keep and hold onto when he inevitably lets go.

“I thought we’d lost you,” Círdan says hoarsely as he steps back.

“So had I,” he admits, finally daring to look back across the field. “We did lose them,” he says, and his heart aches for the little boys who refuse to be stolen twice.

But Círdan has an odd look on his face. “Maybe,” is all he says, and he keeps a hand on Gil-Galad’s back as they turn to walk away.

(Maglor weeps when he sees them, and Elrond isn’t sure if they’re sad or happy tears.

“I’m sorry,” he says helplessly, feeling his own tears well up at last.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Maglor says fiercely. “Not to me. Not ever,” and he opens his arms a little: always an offer, never a demand.

Elrond burrows into them immediately, gently as he can after he feels Maglor’s silent flinch. Elros is right there next to him in the embrace, and for the first time in weeks, Elrond doesn’t feel that horrible blankness hovering anywhere near him at all.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I portray Gil-Galad in this much younger and more uncertain than I usually do, but to me it made a certain amount of sense: Gil-Galad will do great deeds someday, but he hasn't done them yet, and the history of his predecessors is intimidating to say the least.


End file.
